Gelpiyo returns with a six-minute sequel in October

TOKYO MX has dated a second series of Gelpiyo, its six-minute comedy about a cluster of squishy gel creatures and the extremely peculiar days they have. The new run begins on Wednesday 21 October in the broadcaster's 21:54 slot, and the promise on its own programme page is more characters, more school-uniformed chickens and more of the cheerful, faintly surreal chaos that the first series made its business.

A short show with a long guest list

The format is unchanged: Gelpiyo is a weekly strip that runs a few minutes rather than a full half hour, built around the mascot character Taica Corporation created for its Alpha Gel material. The creatures return with the same troupe of voices — Emi Nitta as Gelpiyo and Burapiyo, Shota Aoi as Aopiyo and Hirachiki, Taisei Fukumoto as Bamopiyo and Bosuchiki, JJ of Def Class as Midopiyo, Aopon as Momopiyo, Dome Narita as Parupiyo and Daisuke Toyama of the comedy duo Grange as Sumopiyo.

What the franchise does with guests is its own running joke. The sequel adds Park Yu-chun as a fortune teller, SU of RIP SLYME as SUpiyo, the band SILENT SIREN as Saisaipiyo and NEVER END ROLL as Nebaenpiyo, which means the show now counts two bands and a K-pop and J-pop veteran among its bit parts.

SILENT SIREN take the opening theme

SILENT SIREN perform the opening theme, 「あっとUMA」, written by the band's Suu with music and arrangement by Naoki Kubo; Suu and Aina Yamauchi also voice the in-story band. NEVER END ROLL provide the ending theme, 「頑張ってるって最高じゃん！」. The first series ran for ten episodes from 21 January 2026 across TOKYO MX and R Channel; the sequel repeats the following Wednesday inside Wake Up 7 and streams on TVer, which keeps the whole run on the broadcaster's own platforms.

That platform detail matters outside Japan. No overseas streamer has been announced for Gelpiyo, and TVer is geo-locked, so for now the sequel is a Japan-only release with no legal route to watch it from the UK or the United States.

Our opinion

The modern anime business rarely makes room for a six-minute weekly cartoon about office-grade slime, and that is exactly why Gelpiyo is worth watching as a format experiment. Short strips cost a fraction of a cour, they can be made by a small team on a short cycle, and they slot into a broadcast slot that a full episode would have to fight for. If the sequel holds its audience, it is a template other committees can copy without betting a season on it.

The guest casting is the other half of the trick, and it is cleverer than it looks. Park Yu-chun, SU of RIP SLYME and two rock bands appearing as themselves-ish blobs turns each episode into a small event for fans of the guests, and it costs the production almost nothing in screen time. It is promotion that works as comedy rather than as an advert.

The frustration is that none of it travels. A show this small and this cheap to subtitle is precisely the kind of thing that could travel, and leaving it on a geo-locked catch-up service means the audience it is quietly building for Japanese broadcast never gets to grow anywhere else. Taica gains nothing from a mascot that only Japan can watch.